Реферат: A Guide To The End Of The

and hazard mitigation, and the outcome of the battle against

nature’s dark side remains far from a foregone conclusion.

While we now know far more about natural hazards, the

mechanisms that drive them, and their sometimes awful consequences, any benefits accruing from this knowledge have

been at least partly negated by the increased vulnerability of

large sections of the Earth’s population. This has arisen primarily as a result of the rapid rise in the size of the world’s

population, which doubled between 1960 and 2000. The

bulk of this rise has occurred in poor developing countries,

many of which are particularly susceptible to a whole spectrum of natural hazards. Furthermore, the struggle for

Lebensraum has ensured that marginal land, such as steep

hillsides, flood plains, and coastal zones, has become increasingly utilized for farming and habitation. Such terrains are

clearly high risk and can expect to succumb on a more frequent basis to, respectively, landsliding, flooding, storm

surges, and tsunamis. Another major factor in raising vulnerability in recent

years has been the move towards urbanization in the most

hazard-prone regions of the developing world. Within just a

few years, and for the first time ever, more people will live in

urban environments than in the countryside, many crammed

into poorly sited and badly constructed megacities with populations in excess of 8 million people. Forty years ago New

York and London topped the league table of cities, with

populations, respectively, of 12 and 8.7 million. In 2015,

however, cities such as Mumbai (formerly Bombay, India),

Dhaka (Bangladesh), Karachi (Pakistan), and Mexico City

will be firmly ensconced in the top ten: gigantic

sprawling agglomerations of humanity with populations

approaching or exceeding 20 million, and extremely vulnerable to storm, flood, and quake. A staggering 96 per cent of

all deaths arising from natural hazards and environmental

degradation occur in developing countries and there is currently no prospect of this falling. Indeed, the picture looks as

if it might well deteriorate even further. With so many people

shoehorned into ramshackle and dangerously exposed cities